Birthday Blog

This blog celebrates its first birthday today. What a time I've had. A Dorset Rhubarb Kiosk, a Gloucestershire Fire Extinguisher. An Essex Cinema, a Kent Moon Rocket. Bedford Vans, Riley Cars. Tattered Penguins and more Golden Syrup than I've got pudding bowls for. And the people. Scarecrows in a Suffolk pea field and a spooky allotment, and, where it all started, a Pink Panther worshipping in a medieval abbey. But probably best of all has been the happy band of commentators that give me as much pleasure as the posts themselves, and through their own blogs take me to worlds that I could never have dreamt existed. Thankyou everybody. (Takes out big onion and red spotted handkerchief.) As Toby Savage said very early on in this enterprise "We used to do this round a pub table". He's right, but it's now a very big table and all are welcome.

I've been saving the LNER book for today, the covers of which are a superb example of the art of Frank Newbould, who gave us some of the very best flat colour graphic posters of the 1930s. Designed for American tourists, the book simply gives a commentary of what can be seen from LNER trains or reached from their destinations. Including, oddly enough, much in Scotland.